Alterations in fear learning/generalization are considered to be relevant mechanisms engendering the development of anxiety disorders being the most prevalent mental disorders. Although anxiety disorders almost exclusively have their first onset in childhood and adolescence, etiological research focuses on adult individuals. In this study, we evaluated findings of a recent meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies in adult anxiety disorders with significant associations of four single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a large cohort of 347 healthy children (8-12 years) characterized for dimensional anxiety. We investigated the modulation of anxiety parameters by these SNPs in a discriminative fear conditioning and generalization paradigm in the to-date largest sample of children. Results extended findings of the meta-analysis showing a genomic locus on 2p21 to modulate anxious personality traits and arousal ratings. These SNPs might, thus, serve as susceptibility markers for a shared risk across pathological anxiety, presumably mediated by alterations in arousal.
Keywords: Anxiety disorders; Anxiety risk genes; Anxious personality traits; Arousal; Childhood and adolescence; Fear conditioning and generalization.